Having spent a bit of time over lunch writing aboutvaguely serious matters - I found this on the net andthought you might enjoy it, if you have not seen itbefore.

A SQUIRRELS TALE

REST OF THE WORLD VERSION:The squirrel works hard in the withering heat allsummer long, building and improving his house andlaying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs anddances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed.

The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, sohe dies out in the cold.

THE END

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THE U.K. VERSION:The squirrel works hard in the withering heat allsummer long, building his house and laying up suppliesfor the winter.The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, andlaughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed.

A social worker finds the shivering grasshopper, callsa press conference and demands to know why thesquirrel should be allowed to be warm and well fedwhile others less fortunate, like the grasshopper, arecold and starving.

The BBC shows up to provide live coverage of theshivering grasshopper; with cuts to a video of thesquirrel in his comfortable warm home with a tableladen with food.

The British press inform people that they should beashamed that in a country of such wealth, this poorgrasshopper is allowed to suffer so, while others haveplenty.

The Labour Party, Greenpeace, Animal Rights and TheGrasshopper Council of GB demonstrate in front of thesquirrel’s house.

Harriet Harman rants in an interview with Jeremy Paxmanthat the squirrel got rich off the backs ofgrasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike onthe squirrel to make him pay his “fair share” and calls onBoris Johnstone to increase the charge for squirrels to enter innerLondon.

In response to pressure from the media, the Governmentdrafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper AntiDiscrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning ofthe summer.

The squirrel’s taxes are reassessed.

He is taken to court and fined for failing to hiregrasshoppers as builders for the work he was doing onhis home and an additional fine for contempt when hetold the court the grasshopper did not want to work.

The grasshopper is provided with a council house,financial aid to furnish it and an account with alocal taxi firm to ensure he can be socially mobile.

The squirrel’s food is seized and re distributed tothe more needy members of society, in this case thegrasshopper.

Without enough money to buy more food, to pay the fineand his newly imposed retroactive taxes, the squirrelhas to downsize and start building a new home.

The local authority takes over his old home andutilises it as a temporary home for asylum seekingcats who had hijacked a plane to get to Britain asthey had to share their country of origin with mice.On arrival they tried to blow up the airport becauseof Britain’s apparent love of dogs.

The cats had been arrested for the internationaloffence of hijacking and attempted bombing but wereimmediately released because the police fed thempilchards instead of salmon whilst in custody.

Initial moves to then return them to their own countrywere abandoned because it was feared they would facedeath by the mice. The cats devise and start a scam toobtain money from people’s credit cards.

A Panorama special shows the grasshopper finishing upthe last of the squirrel’s food, though spring isstill months away, while the council house he is in,crumbles around him because he hasn’t bothered tomaintain the house.

He is shown to be taking drugs. Inadequate governmentfunding is blamed for the grasshopper’s drug‘illness’.

The cats seek recompense in the British courts fortheir treatment since arrival in UK.

The grasshopper gets arrested for stabbing an old dogduring a burglary to get money for his drugs habit. Heis imprisoned but released immediately because he hasbeen in custody for a few weeks.

He is placed in the care of the probation service tomonitor and supervise him. Within a few weeks he haskilled a guinea pig in a botched robbery.

A commission of enquiry, that will eventually cost£10,000,000 and state the obvious, is set up.

Additional money is put into funding a drugrehabilitation scheme for grasshoppers and legal aidfor lawyers representing asylum seekers is increased.

The asylum-seeking cats are praised by the governmentfor enriching Britain’s multicultural diversity anddogs are criticised by the government for failing tobefriend the cats.

The grasshopper dies of a drug overdose. The usualsections of the press blame it on the obvious failureof government to address the root causes of despairarising from social inequity and his traumaticexperience of prison.

They call for the resignation of a minister.

The cats are paid a million pounds each because theirrights were infringed when the government failed toinform them there were mice in the United Kingdom.

The squirrel, the dogs and the victims of thehijacking, the bombing, the burglaries and robberieshave to pay an additional percentage on their creditcards to cover losses, their taxes are increased topay for law and order and they are told that they willhave to work beyond 65 because of a shortfall ingovernment funds.

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After many years paying lawyers,I became one in 2005 Just in time for the largest upheaval in the law since records began. Brilliant. Exiting times ahead.

Disclaimer. The thoughts, ideas and comments on this Blawg ("Blawg - a legal Blog) are my own and not to be confused (unless otherwise stated) with anyone else and certainly not of anyone in the Firm where I used to work and they are not the views of the firm where I used to work.